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IT WAS NOT A GOOD YEAR

It was definitely not a good year...It was ten years since the March on Washington and yet all those things those brave martyrs -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, "the sit ins", "the students", Jack and Robert Kennedy; Whitney Young; Adam Powell; Malcolm X stood and died for yet you would not have known it from the meager actions on human and civil rights coming out of the administration in Washington. In fact, things got so back that 120,000 members in Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, one of the eight National Black collegiate organizations called for a meeting of all Blacks to discuss new strategies for Black Survival. The meeting will convene August 17, 18, 1974 in Big Bethel Church, the historic spot in Philadelphia where Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the AME Church in the New World, held a similar meeting "A Call to Arms for the Rights of Blacks" during Revolutionary times.

It was, of course, the year of Watergate. But despite lack of moral leadership from the administration at the top -- and in spite of the Nixon administration's policy of "benign neglect", Blacks exhorted new political acumen and muscle. They chartered a new course of political progress for survival by capturing the City Halls of Los Angeles, California Raleigh, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; Detroit, Michigan, and Compton, California.

It was also a year of hope. Success pointed toward fruition with Tom Bradley, Clarence Lightner, Maynard Jackson, Jr., and Coleman Young.

But it was still the year of Watergate with a President engrossed in battling to the last ditch to save himself at the expense of his "in set" responsible for executing the scandals of his administration.

Although Henry Kissinger spent "beaucoup" of our tax dollars travelling around the world trying to solve the problems of the Middle East, the same Henry and his administrators did not lift a finger to stop the forcing out of Barbara Watson from his State Department right here at home.

Yes, it was the year of Watergate and the vicissitude of policy from on top was executed by a President who stopped allocating federal funds voted by the Congress to keep those Kennedy and Johnson programs going. 1973 was definitely not a good year because those funds were needed to maintain hope, aspirations and dignity for Blacks through education and employment.

It was definitely not a good year because the Man on High in His merciful wisdom called home many stalwart toilers in our field. It was the year Percy Ifill, the architect of the State Office Building in New York, died. It was the year Betty Saitch, a true humanitarian, died; it was the year Dr. George Wiley, who had left his classroom to work in the University of the Underprivileged, died. It was the year Arno Bontemp, the sculptor, died; it was the year Tom Riddle, Allen Bibb, Dunbar McLaurin, Frank Shiffman, J. L. Scruggs, Ruth Spearman, Betty Drake, Marie Parker and Alton Walker died.

It was a year of sadness because Ted Posten who labored so valiantly to express our hopes passed.

It was also the year the Nixon Administration sold or gave away our national food wealth to foreign lands but failed to lift a finger to aid starving Blacks on the Continent of Africa. 

It was a year of high profits and a phony energy crisis engineered by the oil lobby. It was also the year that droves of Blacks in those Urban Affairs spots were eliminated from the payrolls of the Board Rooms.

It was a year of crisis - a crisis born out of frustration because Blacks who operated small businesses which enabled them to keep funds in their communities, all of a sudden, found themselves forced to walls because another Federal agency folded.

And yet it was a year for levity. It was a year Red Foxx found out he had a voice and used it to ask the establishment to give him a part of the action.

And lastly, it was the year in which, although the clubhouses took back the political scene in New York, the politicians had one hell of a time trying to find a Black to fill a $40,000 a year Deputy Mayor's job.

Seems the boys in the smoke-filled rooms came up with something about qualifications and screening. Yet a lot of the others who got through, later had to be reconsidered. I wonder who raised those funds that the Mayor used?

DELEGATE, 1974
MELPAT ASSOCIATES * Producers
2225 Fifth Avenue
MEL PATRICK, President and Publisher
HILDA STOKELY, Exec. Vice President (212)FO8-5559
ANN PATRICK, Secretary and Treasurer

4-9  Sigma announces plan for survival at National Pan Hellenic Herb Wright, and the Georgia Club.
10-18 In Memoriam, Lest we forget
22-23 National Association of Black Social Workers
24-27 The Student National Medical Association
28-31 Edges
32-35 Girl Friends
36-37 Viceroy Story
41-43 Prince Hall Masons
44-47 National Market Developers
48-49 Chi Delta Mu and Chi Delta Mu Wives
50-57 National Newspaper Publishers
58-61 A Trojan Retires
62-69 NAACP Spellout
72-75 Lambda Kappa Mu
76-77 National Insurance Association
78-85 National Urban League
86-91 American Business at Urban League
93-99 National Church Ushers Association
102-109 National Medical Association
111-113 National Medical Ladies' Auxiliary to N.M.A.
114-115 National Council of Negro Women
116-117 Festival on the River
118-122 Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority
125-127 Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity
128-131 Eta Phi Beta Sorority
132-135 National Funeral Directors Assoc.
136-139 Zeta Phi Beta Sorority
140-143 National College Women Association
145-150 National Dental Association and Ladies Auxiliary to N.D.A.
152-157 National Negro Business and Professional Womens Club
158-159 Coleman Young, Welcome to Detroit
164-165 Black Athletes - Hall of Fame
166-173 Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
174     Daughters of Isis
176-177 Elks of the World
179-183 Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority
184-185 Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
187-189 Meet Dr. Gloria Toote
190-193 United Mortgage Bankers of America
194-195 American Bridge Association
196-201 369 Veterans Association
202-205 Media Women
206-209 The Association for the Study of Afro American Life in History
210-215 Black Caucus
216-219 National Business League
220-223 Morehouse College
224-227 Kenya
228-229 American Tours
230-231 Barbados
232-233 Omega
238-239 Miller Brewing Company Story
240-241 Martin Turbee of Sommerset Distributers
242-243 Eastern Airlines
244-245 Alvin Ailey, Phelp-Stokes Fund
246-252 Oak Bluff

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